


After the Quarry

by freddiejoey



Category: Arthur of the Britons
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-30
Updated: 2011-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-23 06:14:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freddiejoey/pseuds/freddiejoey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kai is a little upset by what he was made to do at the quarry.......</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Quarry

Guilt

Llud has done his best with Thuna’s remedies before we ride home, but having to put his tunic back on so soon has done Arthur far more harm than good. I see how stiffly my brother sits on horseback; how he tries not to wince when dismounting in Col’s village; how he draws back imperceptibly from the joyful embrace of gratitude bestowed on him by Col’s wife.

There was simply no choice in the matter – either Arthur could now have a back adorned by welts or be dead. The welts were the only and far kinder option. But the memory of that leather strap singing through the air, rapacious to scourge my little brother’s skin, the sight of his blood embedded in the lines of my trembling hands…..

Laughing, Arthur has made light of it. Likening it to the beating Christ received as the last effort for Pontius Pilate to spare him from crucifixion. “See, my Kai, you have succeeded where Pilate failed.” It makes no difference. Still I shiver as we ride back into the village, back into our everyday lives. The Romans called such whips as Rodolph’s the ferula and the lashings were known as the flagellotio. They were merited by criminal acts. But my little brother is no criminal and I am no Roman lictor. I am merely a man irrevocably in love.

Once in our bedroom, I try to douse my distress through practicality. Llud goes to fetch Lenni. Gently I strip off Arthur’s tunic and shirt, knowing that I blanch as the festering weals are uncovered. “Here beloved.” I help Arthur on to his stomach, pour him a cup of mead, hold it to his mouth. Tenderly Arthur strokes my cheek. “Don’t worry. Everything will heal in time.” “Not my heart.” I think harshly, biting my lip…….

Softly I move Arthur’s dark hair back from his forehead, so I can imprint my lips there. All that I really want to do is climb into bed with him, hold Arthur protectively in my arms and stay that way forever. But then Lenni appears, armed with her salves and unguents and a sleeping draught. It is only sensible, I know – sleep is the great panacea for so many ailments. And Llud is hovering like a vigilant mother hen, anxiously making soothing noises. It seems best that I join the other men in the main room of the longhouse and drink myself into oblivion……….

For a week or more life does indeed to be slowly returning to normal. With Arthur recovering, Llud and I are busier than usual. At night, between weariness and an overindulgence of mead, I am able to fall into bed and be engulfed by deep dreamless sleep. The next morning my head is inevitably heavy and I am outside at dawn, dipping it into the water trough. But at least the recollections of standing beside Arthur while my love is forced to straddle the rock are dulled and blunted.

On the fourth night, while Llud snores, Arthur slips into my bed. Gradually I come awake. Thinking that I am still sleeping, Arthur moulds his body to mine, lightly kisses my hair, whispers “I love you.” Then I feel Arthur’s limbs go listless as the sleeping potion claims him again. I lay sleepless for the rest of the night, listening to my brother’s quiet steady breathing, loving him more than life itself. When the sunrise comes and Arthur pads back to his own bed, the sheepskin where my cheek has rested is wet and bitter with salt………

Five or six afternoons later, Llud rides out on a mission to Cornwall. It is not particularly urgent and I look at our father rather suspiciously when he comes to take leave of me. His expression is casual enough, but Llud pats my shoulder meaningfully and his “Take care of your brother” is heartfelt. As I watch him gallop away, past the river, I start to feel the first inklings of dread crawling icily in the pit of my stomach. Ridiculous and absurd. I should be languid with anticipation but instead.............

When I go back into the longhouse, Arthur is seated at the table in the main room, speaking to a scout who is preparing to ride through shifty Dirk's territory and report back any dubious activities. He is wearing one of the loose-fitting shirts Lenni has stitched for him, as blue as his eyes, and his dark hair is satiny and damp from bathing. When he sees me those blue eyes glow and his smile is warm like summer sunshine……..

Praying that he does not recognize my uncertainty, I try and return the smile, pushing through into our bedroom. Lying on Arthur’s bed, where his head is usually pillowed at night, is a small familiar flask which holds the sweetest, most aromatic oil. It is an appeal, an invitation, a promise. In unison my head and my heart start to pound.........

That night I watch my little brother intently over the rim of my mead cup. Only Emlyn, one of Olwen’s young nephews, is left at the table with us now. Lenni has long cleared everything away and departed back to her hut for the night. Yawning, Emlyn stands up and stretches. “Well, I'm ready to seek my bed.” Arthur's lips twitch in amusement. “Will you be attempting to entice Leesa into it on your way home?” Emlyn gives a bark of laughter. “No, I can recognise defeat when it slaps me in the face often enough. It's not me she's interested in. It's only your brother. You're a lucky man Kai.”

“Yes I am” I think bleakly, “The luckiest man in the world who has everything he has ever desired laid before him.......” Trying to appear affable, I nod in reply. Still chuckling Emlyn wraps himself in his cloak and pulls open the door, letting in a chill whisper of night wind. Instinctively I shudder, not venturing to identify the cause……..

When I turn around, Arthur is standing, proffering his hand in welcome. “Kai my heart, I love you because the air smells like dew after a storm, because winter flows into spring and the north wind blows north. Be with me. Come to bed.”

Weak with desire, I crush Arthur against my body, crush his lips against mine, painstakingly careful to wrap my arms where they will not bother his still-inflamed welts……

Now I am as hard as a bolt, standing to attention like the stiffest legionary in silvered armour……..Together we tumble backwards into the bedroom, ravenous with want, rife with need. Perhaps I am being overly cautious, probably ludicrous as well……. There was no other way to save him, I only did what had to be done, the turmoil exists all in my head……..

He sees my buckram cock and smiles, rubbing his own rigid shaft against my thigh through our breeches. It is going to be alright after all. I am melting, whirling, already delirious……

Arthur falls to his knees on the nearest bed, pulls my breeches around my shins, leans forward to take my throbbing prick in his delicious moist mouth. Sloping his wet tongue against the taut foreskin, he begins to work into a fiery rhythm, giving short firm licks, searing my innards, plunging me headlong into heaven……..

Overwhelmed by love and relief, I reach down to kiss his shining black head – and his shirt slithers up his lean back, exposing those bright crimson weals……

Suddenly the edges of my vision crease and darken, like a burning parchment scrolling into muted cloudy ash……….Again I can hear the lash arcing across the windy blue sky, clawing my little brother’s pale flesh, his stoic resolve not to cry out and thus spare me……….

The tears burn and blind………Stumbling, I yank up my breeches, determined not to see Arthur’s stricken disbelieving expression, blundering toward the door……… “No….I cannot…….forgive me………I love you……..” And then, the cold night air is burnishing my wretched coward’s face………

I have lost him – because of my overweening pride, my need to always prove myself braver, stronger, more tenacious than all other men…… What did Rolf the Preacher once call Llud? Conscience of the world? Well then, I think that I am a saviour – Arthur who can save Col, Arthur who can rescue a village of Celts from a Saxon quarry in the most miraculous fashion………. Arthur who cannot solace his own Kai’s heart………..

Col would no doubt have survived without my foolhardy intervention. A little sorer and rawer perhaps – but still in one piece and able to return home with the others. And Kai would not now have a flayed heart to match my flayed back. Whatever happened when I forced him to wield that accursed scourge……. all the blame and guilt are mine yet he cannot see it………

Kai wanted to ride back and fetch more men. Yet I insisted that we already had an army at our disposal and as usual, I would brook no argument. Yes, it would have been difficult to march a rescue party through Saxon territory undetected, but with stealth and disguise, it would have been possible. And ultimately, it was a sound idea, much less precipitate than my venture in many ways. In the end we were able to arm ourselves and free the enslaved Celts – but at what cost to Kai’s soul?

Why do I not realise what it does to him each time that his Saxon blood is exposed as something to be shunned and shamed? Each time the Saxons are proven to be more barbarous and brutal, some essence deep inside him falters, dies another little death……

Only this time I have failed him further – bringing home not a chance wound, inflicted by some random anonymous Saxon axe, but methodical weals inflicted by my big brother in the guise I forced him to adopt. The guise of a Saxon brute that he has so long striven to repudiate.

Even then all might have been well if I had held my temper, bided my opportunity, never dealt Rodolph that nonsensical blow……..

Now, though, my self-piteous musings are interrupted by the sound of a horse’s hooves thudding from the stables, past the longhouse, toward the palisade…….

Fumbling in my frantic haste, hot bitter tears galling my sight, I pull open the outer doors, peering into the night. Above, a full frosted moon beams across the starry sky, illuminating the village in its milky glimmer. It shows me my brother mounted at the gate, murmuring something to the sentries, glowing golden in the silvery light, infinitely beautiful, infinitely forfeit……..

With an abrupt nudge of Kai’s heels, the black horse leaps breakneck into the darkness…….and he is devoured by the witching hour……. utterly gone……..I could try and follow him but I cannot leave the village wholly leader-less with Llud already away. Besides, I am not certain where he is headed, where he is likely to flee…….

It comes to me, all at once, that I have never truly made the effort to discover where that might be……….It could be one place I could name or a hundred others or perhaps none……..

What had he said to me when I was lashed to the rock, awaiting the whip? “Arthur, it’s the only way I can save you.” I whispered “I know” – but, in truth, I know nothing. I am simply nothing but a proud short-sighted fool who has so often spurned salvation, weeping among the cold rushes, with a flailed nothing heart…….

 

Unravelling

Halfway to Cornwall I turn back. The mission is not urgent and my old wily hunter’s nose is twitching. Arthur jests about it – the feeling I sometimes get that trouble is on its way………..stormy tempests blowing in from the estuary…….imminent reports of roving Saxons or wayward plundering Picts……….matters of the heart having gone awry between my sons…….

Riding through the night, I reach the ridge above the village just after dawn – and there it is, the reason for the unceasing twitchiness………..Kai’s black horse, quietly cropping the grass outside a shepherd’s hut hidden high in the summer pastures, smoke rising from the opening in its beehive roof.

I know that Kai has used it often in the past for his liaisons with local girls – although I don’t think that he knows that I know. In fact it has been favoured by many others for such activities since Roman times – perhaps even myself on the odd occasion. However I am absolutely certain that is not why my elder son is here now. Rather I am absolutely sure that he will be alone.

Sighing, I tether my own horse and prepare to go inside. It was not for a helping of Mark’s boisterous company that I was travelling to the coast……….

I love both my boys with my entire heart. They are challenging, wonderful, breathtaking miracles to me. Would that they were sometimes kinder to each other though and would just be still so that they might recognize what I have always known - that they are simply two halves of the one infinite whole……..

When I duck inside the hut door, Kai's red-rimmed hollow eyes tell their own clear tale. He is sitting in front of the fire, warming or rather charring some hunks of barley bread on a fork, slurping straight from a pitcher of mead without recourse to a cup. So, obviously in a bad way, obviously in need of solace or advice or probably both……….

Crouching down beside him, I grab one of the blackened bannocks, spread it with some rather thin honey lurking in a dish on the table, take the pitcher from Kai’s outstretched hand and guzzle the mead, letting it dribble unheeded down my chin. All the while waiting for him to speak.

And finally he does, in a weary voice that assails my fatherly heart. “I thought you were supposed to be on your way to Cornwall.” I swill another drink, purchasing time to think…… “ I thought you were supposed to be home with your brother.” Silence. The crunch of burnt bread that no doubt tastes like cinders on his tongue – and no doubt still would if it were Lenni’s best honeyed oatmeal.

With a definitive clunk, I put the pitcher on the earthen floor between us. “Perhaps both of us are burdened by thoughts that changed our plans.” I hear the sob swell up in Kai’s throat, see the tears gleam in his brown eyes – but they refuse to fall. If you have wept all night, there does come a point when no more water can be wrung – believe me, I know from bitter first-hand experience………

“I did something unforgivable……..more than one thing……….it cannot be undone…” His words are muffled and he will not meet my gaze, glancing into the flames, out into the misty morning, into the depths of the pitcher. I smile, musing, at first, about the wild exaggeration of the young……….and then realise that he really believes it. Really has determined that whatever he has done is far beyond the pale, far past pardon………….

Leaning forward, I lay a steady hand on his shoulder. “Oh Kai, nothing could ever be so terrible that you wouldn’t be given grace where Arthur is concerned. I’ve only been gone a day or so. Before I left, I thought everything……….” You might not suspect this, but it is sometimes quite difficult to find the right ways to express exactly what I need to say in these situations…….

More stony silence. More recalcitrant glistening tears. Suddenly I notice how his clenched hands are trembling - and I am struck by a recent vivid memory of his fingers quivering in the same fashion, clenched around that accursed Saxon lash daubed with Arthur’s fresh blood……..

This time I attempt to pat his knee in consolation. “Listen. If this has anything to do with what you were forced to do at the quarry, then some of the blame can be laid at my feet. I was badly remiss there. I should have encouraged you to talk, given some sounder reassurance. Therefore, I’m sorry as well. Sometimes the warrior supplants the father too strongly in me………”

All at once we have a new intermingling of silence and tears because Kai is weeping without a sound. His shoulders shake and he puts his hands over his face – yet the tears fall between his splayed fingers. So……… progress of a kind……I have walloped a certain nail firmly on the head.

Nonetheless, how to proceed next eludes me. Whatever has gone awry between them behind barred doors is certainly none of my business – although I possess enough imagination to take a wild stab in the dark and probably hit close to the target. Yet somehow…….

Maybe diversionary tactics……..just while the wet snuffling gradually reduces to hiccupping sniffling. Seeking inspiration, I riffle around in the splintery old chest beside the hearth, find two battered wooden goblets, fill them with the dregs of the pitcher. Oh yes, I think I have a suitable topic in mind now……..

Carefully I take a generous sip. “What would you say if I told you that I have my wily old eye on a particular woman of the village?” Ah, good choice you old fox Llud. Kai’s chestnut eyes widen in amazement. “A woman? You?” I chuckle softly, glad that the diversion appears to be working. “Yes, I understand that you and your brother think that most of me has been moribund for years…..” (Oh well, in for a silver piece as well as a bronze, it is an old secret after all and she would not begrudge the telling now.) “But I’ll have you know that here and there, over the years while you were growing up, Ana and I…….”

Kai looks more astounded than I have seen him in quite some time…….certainly not since he realised that Arthur returned his innermost feelings……… “Ana? Lenni’s mother?” I pretend to be offended. “No need for quite that degree of astonishment. She was a pretty woman with a good heart, like her daughter. And I think I requited some special needs of hers. It was a happy arrangement………we fathomed each other perfectly.” My elder son seems thoughtful. “There were times…….I am just going to Ana’s hut you would say, to get salve for my finger, so she can trim my hair, bind the stub on my toe and then you would be away for so much longer than the task could possibly warrant….”

With a slight smile, I nod. “Proof that everything has not been coated in dust since Noah built the Ark. And at the present moment……” For the first time since I arrived, I see Kai’s mouth pulse in something other than sorrow. “Are you going to tell me who she is or make me guess?” My smile grows. “No, I’ll be kind and refuse to keep you in suspense. It’s Olwen, Perry’s widow. I know that it has only been a matter of months and I wouldn’t dream of mentioning anything to her for quite a while yet. But in time…….I’m hoping……..Perry and I were childhood friends. He wouldn’t stint Olwen any kind of happiness.”

Slowly, Kai lets out a breath. “Nor would anyone else. We all like Olwen. It would be nice for both of you.” Alright, perhaps timely now to guide the conversation back in the direction where it must inevitably be nudged……. I stand up, take the pitcher to the mead barrel in the corner, start to fill it and talk with my back turned. It seems easier if probably lily-livered. “Speaking of women – and I know we often do since you enchant so many of the village maidens that I’ve long lost count – there is another matter I would discuss with you soon. The fact that Yorath the Jute has a marriageable girl who may do well for your brother one day………”

Silence again. I turn around slowly, praying that I haven’t miscalculated. But no, Kai simply looks mildly interested. It has not brought a new bleakness to his gaze. The old bleakness still brims – a desolation telling me that he believes it will not be an issue he need grapple with at any level beyond the strictly brotherly. This then is much graver than I anticipated……. Even his tears are stagnant…..He honestly thinks that the unforgivable will remain so for always………

My heart shatters. When Arthur was trying to get his fellow chieftains to band together against the Saxons the first time, I told him that there were times to fight with the mind and other times to battle from the belly. So too where the heart is concerned – but with one crucial difference. When we love, we love with both the mind and the heart and the two must remain inextricably entwined if our world is to be kept solid and certain. When the two are sundered, trouble ensues – as it has now for Kai. Being betrayed by the falsities his mind is conjuring while his heart craves only his brother’s assurance and touch……….

Returning to the hearth, I sit down on the bench beside Kai, proffer the pitcher. Quietly he shakes his head. Good, he at least recognizes that the solution does not lie in fermented ensnarement. “Look, simply a vague notion. The girl is already betrothed to that southern chieftain called Hecla . Besides, I only mentioned it to ascertain how things really stood…… Of course, we both know how complicated a matter it would be anyway.” And so we are back to the immediate problem at hand……and finally I realise what needs to be said……….

Putting a firm finger beneath his drooping chin, I raise Kai’s head and he is forced to meet my eyes. “Let it go Kai. Whatever guilt, regret, shame, you feel. It’s misplaced and misguided. Believe me. I know from experience dipped in vinegar. Perhaps you can’t even explain to yourself how it all makes sense – or doesn’t. Your Saxon heritage, the parts you sometimes have to play in our everyday Celtic world, the part you were forced to play at the quarry, acceptance and rejection, proof and vindication.”

I see that some of my erratically slung arrows have reached their mark from Kai’s stillness and his considering expression. Probably I am meandering too much – emulating Hereward the Holy, if at his least garrulous. But I am desperate to make him understand, set his soul free from their self-imposed bonds…….. “For years I condemned myself because I was away from my homestead when Cerys and Shannyn were attacked by the Saxons. The truth is that I would probably have died too if I had been there that day. There would have been nothing extraordinary I could have done to change fate. And nothing in the world has been more fulfilling than having you as my son. See, too complex and intricate for this tired old mind to unravel. Just as what happened at the quarry shouldn’t ordain your whole future because it somehow involved confronting your Saxon blood. Your life – and your heart – are way too precious for that – and far too cherished by others.”

Tears once more. The human capacity for weeping is truly miraculous……. But healing tears I hope this time, tears for mending rather than mourning…….. “Here’s what I think you should do. Whatever happened while I was away between you and your brother………trust me when I say that it will pass. We all falter and we all climb back up stronger – and wiser if we heed the gods.”

“Go to Cornwall in my stead. Stay a few more days than necessary. Ignore the bluster and conceit and go hunting with Mark. Look at the infinite ocean. Enjoy the warm weather. Then come home to us again and be happy. Let me love you as dearly as any father can and let your brother love you as he must if he breathes………It is all that we deserve……and it is what you deserve and more………..”

It is certainly not the end of anything, even if I must cease speaking or go hoarse. There is much murmuring and uncertainty still to come, much tear-dabbing and nose-blowing – all the usual business of making better, gaining hope, garnering courage……. But finally Kai is persuaded on to horseback, headed in the direction of the Cornish coast, my hand still warm from his clasping mine………

Left alone, I take several deep fortifying breathes, pour another cup of mead, sip it slowly. Then square my shoulders and rise to my feet. One down. One obviously to go. As the sun climbs triumphantly above the valley, I turn my horse’s weary head toward the village………

 

Resolution

My younger son has always been so much more of an enigma than my elder. Kai is fairly straightforward – you may sometimes need to swing a small mallet in his direction but never a great club as with Arthur. That boy can be more reticent than the statues at Sarum.

Nothing like Travon there. Lying beside countless campaign fires while we fought the Saxons in the east, Travon spilled his feelings as readily as grain from a rent in a sack. This girl whom he thought he loved….another who had mired his heart……his joy when he married Vala and found her to be everything he had ever desired in a wife……… (Move along old man, dabbling through treacherous waters that will quickly close over your head if you are not wary)……

No, where his feelings are concerned, Arthur is truly his mother’s son – reserved and restrained. Although it does not mean that they run any less deep or fierce below that seemingly calm surface……..Now he says the same as his brother when I walk into the longhouse. “I thought that you were in Cornwall.” Voice very steady, Vala’s beautiful midnight-blue eyes anything but if you know just how to read them – as I do.

Arthur is not alone. Lenni is slicing a boar haunch at the small table behind him – although she is not to whom I refer since her powers of preservation are absolute, lovely girl. However a group of village warriors are lounging around the main room, obviously hopeful of an invitation to the midday meal. Certainly the aroma of that freshly roasted meat is appetising. Politely Arthur requests that they stay and eat, watching me cross to the bedroom as carefully as a white-tipped russet fox inspecting a reckless rabbit.

At the door I turn back casually. “Yes, well I was on my way to Mark’s territory when I ran into your brother – scouting to the west. He offered to go in my place so I could come back and attend to the boys’ weapons training. I told him to take his time – enjoy the warm Cornish weather.” Arthur simply nods and nothing more is said – although I see Lenni’s quick eyes doing their own, no doubt, accurate calculations. That girl knows when Kai scratches any sort of itch.

That night in the sleeping chamber though, as Arthur unfastens his sword belt, I come and sit on the end of his bed. Implacably in view. Unable to be ignored. “Do you want to talk about this?” An emphatic shake of that dark head. Almost anyone else would have asked what Kai had confided since it is quite obvious that his brother and I have spoken. Not Arthur. Rather wait for mead to flow from a stone.

Suddenly I feel a flash of anger. All very well to maintain inscrutability when dealing with wolves like Morged or treacherous brutes like Morcant. Yet where the heart is concerned, especially Kai’s…….

“Alright, tell me to shut my mouth if you want in a moment. First though listen. I am still your father and I love you and Kai more than my life.” Slowly Arthur sits down beside me, his only sign of turmoil the sword belt being restlessly looped around one wrist. “So, something has happened to undo so much that had been made and mended. What it is I don’t wish to know nor need to. And you both think from some foolhardy reasoning of the young that it is irrevocable. Well, I’m here to tell you that nothing has to be irrevocable unless you choose to let it be so. Not while there is breath in your body and a beat in your heart. For heaven’s sake, get on a fresh horse tomorrow at dawn, ride down to Cornwall and heal matters with your brother.”

There is silence. Then: “No.” Clear and final. The sword belt is hung neatly on its hook. Anger kindles again. “Look, I can glean that the problem has arisen from events at the quarry – and I would warrant one in particular. I know that your intentions were sound and the results eventually justified your audacity. But Kai was only playing the role you had assigned him – as he always does without complaint or comment.”

“ We were born Celts Arthur. Kai, on the other hand, has often had to pledge that he is a Saxon by birth, a Celt by persuasion. At the quarry he had to watch his birth tribe inflicting evil and pretend to be a part of it. Then inflict that evil on the person he loves most in all the world. If Kai’s heart needs time to resolve such intricacies…..”

More silence. Arthur has not moved from beside the hanging nook. I have done my best – the rest will not be up to me……… Sighing, I rise to my feet. “You could leave for Cornwall at sunrise……” Flatly, I am interrupted. “I said no. Hereward comes in a few days. The Picts are encroaching on his lands again.”

My younger son’s expression is unfathomable. “One thing I do know Llud………you don’t heed Mark’s advice. What did he tell you before Modred’s field? That life is not a song sung by minstrels?” I fling my boots into the corner with more savagery than I intended. “True Arthur it’s not, but sometimes if we listen hard enough, with enough love, we can still hear the minstrels’ kitharas thrumming on the wind…….”

He says no more. Merely climbs into bed and turns his face to the wall. Whether pretending to sleep or not I cannot be sure……..

Llud does not understand. I at least now do – that I have forsaken Kai too often, too profoundly to make restitution again. I have been complacent when I should have revered, self-righteous instead of thankful. Right from the beginning, when everything was so new and wondrous and precious, and I sent him to Ulrich’s with Elka and Krist…….. Most of all I have failed to love him utterly when he was mine. But no more. I have driven him away and the gods do not proffer infinite chances. Of that much I am certain………

And so we continue on for a week or more. Arthur is the perfect host to bloody moonstruck Hereward - while I am so impatient and irascible that I have to clench my nails into my palm to stop myself smothering the flap jaw fool with his own ludicrous hood. At night I wait for the ice around Arthur’s heart to start coating the longhouse walls with glacial wreathes. By day, I am so grumpy with the poor village boys at weapons drill that they must surely start pleading illness to avoid their ill-tempered instructor. Me, who has always so sworn by praise and encouragement rather than reproof!

One thing I am sure of – Kai cannot return to such frost and ashes. Though what I can exactly do still remains unclear. I think of approaching Olwen with the idea of……..here I pause. She is still too raw a widow. It would be unseemly and probably spoil matters in the long term.

Then there is the notion of Yorath’s daughter. He and I get along quite well – two men of a certain age who want the best for their children. Perhaps the betrothal to Hecla could be broken and then……….but again I hesitate. I do not even know if Arthur would be agreeable. A good match in strategic terms – Rowena is an only child and will one day be the leader of the Jutes. And if he married, Kai and I would at least have an excuse to build a new hut, not be under each other’s feet so incessantly……..Round and round, whirling thoughts that, in the end, lead precisely………….. nowhere.

Then on the eighth day Kai rides through the palisade gate just before sunset……..

I see Llud first, coming to greet me, his face beaming, eyes enquiring. I also see the dusky circles around them that speak of anxiety and sleeplessness. Some fears I can at least allay…….

Yes, it was a profitable journey. Mark is happy with the new defensive arrangements. Yes, the weather was warm in Cornwall, the ocean infinite, the hunting abundant. Deer and boar aplenty. It is all actually proceeding smoothly, my horse is stabled and fed, Llud is telling me about the progress the village boys are making in weapons training, great leaps and overwhelming bounds apparently……….and then, I look up from the stable doors and see Arthur……….

For a moment I am frightened that I will simply fall……..but determination and perhaps pride keep me upright. My little brother, crossing from the store hut, glimpses me and even from this distance, I can tell that all the colour has fled from his face……..

He does not approach. Simply nods in my direction and continues on into the longhouse with his barrel of mead. Llud pursues his lips in a way that signals trouble. But I distract him with tales of Mark’s pomposity and he seems to settle. “Come up to the longhouse and rest before supper.” Carefully I shake my head. “I’ve been on horseback for the better part of two days. It’ll be good to walk. I’ll do the night inspection and be in a little later.” Our father seems none too pleased, yet I am talking sense and he cannot really protest. Besides…….

I have made my decision over the past week – or rather my heart has done the inevitable resolving for me, almost irrespective of me in fact………No going back now…………

The air is chilly outside and Kai is glad of his great furry cape as he inspects the night sentries. Everything is hushed and gratefully he turns back to the longhouse. As he pushes inside he is engulfed by warm firelight, loud voices, raucous laughter. Arthur looks up, immediately casts down his wide blue eyes and then returns to discussing something with Llud and Tugram. The benches are crowded tonight and the mead barrels will be running low in the morning.

Kai responds to a bawdy remark about what he plans to do with Leesa over the next few nights, pours himself a drink and begins knawing at a chicken leg. He stands for a moment in thought and then silently approaches the head of the table……….

 

Everything in the World

Seemingly casual, Kai takes an apple from one bowl, a pear from another. Even more casually he sits down to Arthur’s right. Hardly daring to glance up, Arthur wonders why Kai is still wrapped in his cloak, since it is so close in the noisy room. Then beneath the table, shrouded by Kai’s cape, he feels his big brother’s hand, tentatively seeking his, stroking uncertainly, shyly enquiring……..

Light-headed with love and relief, still not venturing to look or perhaps even breath, Arthur fiercely entwines his fingers through Kai’s - somehow managing to maintain an apparently rational conversation concerning Saxon movements to the east. Gazing around intently everywhere but at his little brother, Kai munches through the pear, erodes the apple efficiently to its core. All the while, his fingers gently soothe, steady, plead……

Finally, Kai sighs, takes a generous sip of mead, jokes across the table to Olwen’s brother Alawn about his ever-hopeful yet unrequited passion for Lenni. Very carefully, he puts his mouth against Arthur’s ear - supposedly he has something important about the night sentries that he has neglected to impart to their chieftain. His voice is low yet his little brother hears every word distinctly. “Arthur, my beloved, I love you because the oceans are unbounded, your eyes are the blue of a stormy summer sky and the west wind blows west. Be with me. Come to bed.”

Kai feels Arthur become very still. Circumspectly, Arthur makes a last comment to Tugram and then inclines his dark head toward Kai, presuming to look at last………. Kai gazes back at him, grinning in unfettered joy, beautiful brown eyes brimming with love……..

As if speaking about everyday village matters, Arthur leans from his great carved chair, grappling the urge to plunge his free hand into that soft blonde thistledown – and carousing warriors be dammed…….. “Are you sure big brother? After all my omissions........” His midnight blue eyes are the almost- ebony of infinite hope – and infinite promise…….. Quietly Kai nods. ‘I’ve never been so certain of anything in my life before little brother………”

Llud glances shrewdly from his elder son to his younger and back again, purses his lips, smiles with satisfaction. He rises to his feet, clapping his hands together so he can be heard above the clamour of voices and laughter. “Alright everyone, I think there’s only bare bones left on these platters now and the ale seems to have been quaffed to the bung. Don’t you all have your own huts to get to? Besides Kai is just back from Cornwall and looks dead on his feet.”

If anyone notes that Kai actually appears as bright-eyed as an early blooming celandine heralding spring, then they are too polite to gainsay Llud – although everyone is probably too befuddled to even notice if their breeches are laced. In an amazingly brisk   
fashion, the longhouse is cleared of every reveller except an indomitable Tugram who seems determined to wring a few last minutes of drunken merrymaking out of the evening.

But no creature in existence is more resourceful than a tenacious Llud……Moving inexorably toward the outer doors, he slings a companionable arm around Tugram’s shoulders. “Up in the store hut there is a barrel of the finest vintage, brought last year from the Greek trader. I think that you and I should take a few pitchers and retire to the guest quarters with this ambrosia and our dice. Perhaps knock on a few other doors on our way. I’m sure that Alawn and Emlyn would be glad of our company….”

Retrieving both their cloaks, Llud guides Tugram firmly out into the night. The longhouse is suddenly, utterly, blissfully, empty…………… there is suddenly, utterly, blissfully, no need to conceal their intertwined hands…………no reason not to stumble to the bedroom and blissfully bar the door…….

Kai leans against the wicker, simply gazing........worshipping.........lost in love……. Turning back, Arthur looks at him a little uncertainly, brow furrowed in concern. “My heart…..”

All at once, Kai is beside him in one rapid stride, holding him fiercely, whispering savagely against his glossy dark hair. “Do you know how sorry I am for my stupidity, how much I long for you to never let me go, how much I love you?” He doesn’t know how hard he is weeping until he feels the tears watering his parched soul, sobs flying wildly out of his throat, welling and sloshing like honeyed mead in an overfull barrel…….

Arthur smiles softly. “Oh I think so my Kai…….I think it is about as strongly, as absolutely, as I love you. And as for you being sorry……what for? Saving my heart in every way that a heart can be saved? Not to mention my life several times over.” He reaches up and gently kisses Kai's beautiful mouth, kisses the tears showering on his cheeks. “Enough of these……..There are other things that we could be……. perhaps the past cannot be refashioned but you are here with me now.”

And this time it is Kai who pulls Arthur closer, trailing kisses of flame from the edge of his little brother’s lips, down that smooth cheek and obstinate jaw, across that silken throat…..as if tomorrow were merely a chimera, a rainbow, a glimmering dream……..

He still weeps when he uncovers the scabbing welts on Arthur’s back, pressing his mouth against the peeling husks. Carefully Kai massages warm scented oil into the lash’s remnants, letting it trickle within the supple crevices of Arthur’s body, caressing his willowy thighs, nuzzling his slender neck, returning to lick every lingering drop of fragrant balm from every delicious creamy contour…….

Already Kai’s magnificent cock is a stake of aching hardening flesh, Arthur’s a ripe burgeoning swell……. Reverently spreading the cheeks of his little brother’s whipcord arse, Kai dips and swirls his famished tongue in and out….. flicking the raven-rimmed furrow from top to bottom……… darting in a ring around the ticklish opening……….. nibbling and probing as Arthur moans his elated acknowledgement……..

Gliding a hand along Arthur’s full-blooded shaft, he begins to ferment and wring – at the same time, circling Arthur’s tender entrance with his own scorching moist prick, softly trickling a sweet-scented flow from the oil flask, lightly pushing near that aromatic pucker…….

Ever so sweetly Kai sinks a little way in, then withdraws slightly, savouring his brother’s velvet heat, listening to his pleading whimpers of pleasure with a rapturous heart.

Suddenly Arthur bucks against him, roaring in wild lust, desperate for Kai to slide inside him, to penetrate his wet core…….

Grasping Arthur’s lean hips in his trembling hands, Kai slowly guides his throbbing cock within that honeyed slick cleft, begins to fiercely rock.

Arthur gasps and arches, ramming his arse onto his big brother’s huge slippery manhood, feeling Kai’s infinite hunger and strength and love………

There is a crest of overwhelming release, of winging free, of intoxicating absolution……..

Then Kai’s hands are drenched by hot cream………

Shimmering spill rains joyously within Arthur’s satiated entrance………

Afterwards it is me who weeps as I lie encircled by his strong warm arms. As I want to stay forever, wrapped around by happiness, melting in thankful bliss.

So this time I am the one to kiss his beautiful wet face and murmur that there has been enough sorrow, sufficient loss – that now, forevermore, we hold heaven in our hands because we are together…….But all at once I falter, since I also long to tell him how he completes my life, yet somehow cannot find the words…….

Then suddenly they come………

His tender mouth brushes against my hair, his tender fingers lace through mine as if they will never be unwound, his tender whisper sweeps across my soul, burnishing my heart…..

“Beloved little brother, you don’t have to always be everything to the world ……. Just remember though that you will always be everything to me…….”


End file.
